208 The Diary of a Drug Fiend
that I was a singer, would I kindly refrain from
meddling with other affairs e”
‘I know,” I put in, “as the captain said when the
first officer interrupted him, ‘‘ What I want from you,
Mr. Mate, is silence, and precious damned little of
that !’”
Again we found ourselves laughing together. It
was really very extraordinary the way in which talking
to Basil or his pupils exhilarated the mind. I began
to see why he was so distrusted and disliked. People
always pretend to want to be lifted out of themselves,
but in reality they’re terribly afraid of anything
happening to them. And Basil always strikes at the
root of one’s spiritual oak. He wants one to be oneself,
and the price of that is to abandon the false ideas that
one has of oneself. People like the sham teachers that
soothe them with narcotic platitudes. ° They dread
having to face realityin any form. That is the real
reason for persecuting prophets.
Of course, I was full of H., but Maisie had made me
forget all about it for a moment.
“Who’s that thin girl that’s always there?” I
asked her.
It was an automatic spurt of jealousy.
“Oh, Lala,” said Maisie, ‘‘she’s rather a dear.
She’s a queer girl, one of the queerest ever. Swiss or
something, I fancy. He’s trained her for the last three
years. He met her, I don’t know how, and asked her
to pose for him. She told me once how startled she
was at the reason he gave. ‘Did you write that psalm,’
he asked her, ‘*’ I can tell all my bones, they look and
stare upon me?’”’’ You know the girl hasn’t got an
ounce of flesh on her body. She’s perfectly healthy ;
she’s just a freak of nature. And while he sketched her
he asked her to suggest a title for the picture. ‘ Paint
me as a dead soul,’ she answered. He caught up the
phrase with fiery enthusiasm, and began to work on
an enormous screen, a triptych with the strangest
beasts and birds and faces, all arranged to lead up to